The Year's Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection

Starred review from July 3, 1995
Dozois's Year's Best, like any successful representative of a large constituency, sometimes suffers from blandness and inconsistency. As usual, it's oversized--23 stories, nearly 600 pages--and includes a variety of types of SF as well as near-horror, fantasy and humor. Five of the stories are final nominees for Nebulas, and two new ``Hainish'' stories by Ursula LeGuin were nominated for Tiptree Awards; ``The Matter of Segrri'' won. No story here is less than competent and professional; but, with a few exceptions, there is a voiceless sameness in the writing, practically a house style, that over so many pages grows tedious. (Nearly half the stories, by page count, come from the Dozois-edited Asimov's Science Fiction.) A number are flawed (``hard'' SF stories about ``aliens'' that think just like humans) or unremarkable, but these are outweighed by many fine pieces and by standouts such as LeGuin's ``Forgiveness Day,'' perhaps the best story in the book; Eliot Fintushel's ``New Wave''-like ``Ylem''; William Sanders's ``Going After Old Man Alabama'' and Terry Bisson's ``The Hole in the Hole,'' both of which are winning and funny; Katherine Kerr's chilling ``Asylum''; and Michael Bishop's grand and humane ``Cri de Coeur.'' Dozois's intelligently and ably put-together anthology does its stated job as well as any one book or editor could. Even with competition, it would still be the best of the Best.

June 28, 1993
Although Dozois ( Geodesic Dreams ) has assembled a collection of 24 very good stories and enhances it with a useful list of runner-up titles, one suspects these tales betray Dozois's idiosyncratic taste more than they represent ``the year's best.'' Consider Ian R. MacLeod's alternative speculation on the Beatles. ``Never quite made it to the very top,'' says one woman in this story, which finds an unemployed, 50-year-old John Lennon smoking, drinking and picking the fluff off his feet, while Paul, George, Ringo and Stuart Sutcliffe--who never did make it to the top--are still plugging along. It may be entertaining to Beatles fans, but not much more than that. Frederick Pohl describes how ``vid'' superstar Rafiel Gutmaker-Fensterborn, a mortal in a largely immortal society, give his final performance (in a tap-dance version of Oedipus Rex ) and finally evades oblivion the old-fashioned way: parenthood. Nancy Kress gives a grim picture of the near future in which gene scans for potential disease can be used to deny people employment and health insurance and doctors who dare treat the uninsurables can endanger their own lucrative careers and risk becoming professional outcasts.